Feminist Fatale

Even if all she’d written was “Fefu and Her Friends” and “Mud,” the playwright and director Maria Irene Fornés, almost eighty years old now, would have done more than her fair share in terms of changing the face of theatre in this country. Born in Havana, Fornés became a U.S. citizen in 1951, when writers such as LeRoi Jones and Frank O’Hara were just beginning to find their way. But Fornés always had her voice, which was inherently feminist and instructive without being self-serious. On the downtown arts scene of her youth, she was also something of a femme fatale, inspiring the ardor of a young intellectual named Susan Sontag. Modest, prolific, and the recipient of nine Obies, Fornés—who has had an equally influential career as a professor—has never had any real competitors. To honor her birthday, INTAR and New York University will present several of her works in the New York Fornés Festival, March 25-April 5. See as many of these plays as you can. No matter how hard Fornés’s subjects can be, her work sits in the ear like luxurious reason. ♦

Hilton Als, The New Yorker’s theatre critic, has been a staff writer since 1994. He is the author of “White Girls.”